…is not nearly as bad as the reviews would have you believe, especially when you take into account that seemingly half of all people reviewing this movie do so in the following manner: “where is the singing and the archery versus knights and where are the Merry Men and why isn’t everybody an anthropomorphized fox THIS IS NOT HOW ROBIN HOOD IS SUPPOSED TO BE.” Which, okay, I get that some people want Robin Hood to be fun and frolicsome, but it’s not like you need a new Disney/Costner Robin Hood because that’s already there so try something else with the story elements. (If anything this film comes off as a more impressive version of the Patrick Bergin/Uma Thurman Robin Hood, which went the Robin McKinley route for historical relevance, and posed the Robin Hood story in Norman/Saxon antagonism – whereas this grounds itself in King John’s struggle against the northern English barons and the eventual signing of the Magna Carta.)

Granted, it’s not perfect by any means, and in particular appears to suffer from a bad case of too-long-for-feature-release-so-let’s-chop-the-running-time-itis; some plotlines end up just feeling incredibly rushed and I expect that in the long run this will follow the same path as Kingdom of Heaven, with a special “extended cut” edition showing up on DVD that’s actually far superior if you don’t mind a three-hour running time. But I enjoyed it well enough.

I had grave doubts about the movie going in, and was pleasantly surprised.

Here’s the thing. It’s basically a historical fiction/period piece. It takes a lot of the actual events of the Richard/John handoff (the Magna Carta, the French Invasion, John’s marital shenanigans and his restructuring of his court) compresses them down, and adds in Robin Hood.

The most welcome part of it, to my mind, was that it did not talk down to me. The French who show up in the movie speak in subtitled french, not in french-accented english. It is NOT afraid to spend large amounts of time showing us the interplay and struggles between John, Philip II, Eleanor of Aquitane, William Marshal (Chancellor under Richard and a minor but important historical figure of the time) and just WALLOWING in the politics. Everything and everyone except the very, very wealthiest is filthy, sort of ugly, and rats and dogs run everywhere.

It doesn’t balk at showing Richard the Lionheart as he actually was; a brave, openhanded asskicker who nontheless was something of an evil bastard and who drove his country into penury and ruin to pay for his foreign adventures, while letting his mother and brother, who spent his whole rain doing his bidding, take the bum rap for it.

I came out of the theater with the impression that they had WANTED to make a straight-up historical drama, and ended up bolting Robin Hood onto it because, well, this ain’t the History Channel. Of course, the previews and advertising give the impression that this is going to be like Gladiator II. It is not. In fact except at the beginning and the end there’s barely any fighting at all; certainly Prince of Thieves had a TON more action.

There are some real howlers in the plot, and it falls down a bit at the end; as MGK said, there are real pacing problems. But its a damn fine movie.

Oh, and Max von Sydow reminds all of us why he is the man. That is all.

I enjoyed it as well, I have no idea why all the other critics didn’t. I expect these same critics to enjoy Marmaduke. Also, why no Ronnie James Dio memorial post? And not that you need more crap to write, but thoughts on a 20 year anniversary of Jim Henson’s death post?

I haven’t seen it, but I do like the idea of showing Richard Coeur de Lion as he actually was. That idiotic crusade of his bankrupted the country, and then he went and got himself held captive on the way back home. (If you’ve ever wondered about the expression ‘King’s Ransom’, this is where it comes from.) And even when he was safely on the throne, he ignored England completely in favour of his French holdings. He didn’t even speak English (his brother may not have spoken it well, but at least he bothered to learn enough for a simple conversation).
I’ve never understood why Richard has always been cast as a hero, while John was considered such a villain. (John was bad in a lot of ways, but I can’t see how he was any worse than his brother.)

I would argue that John had all of Richard’s faults and none of his virtues.

Richard was something of a larger than life figure. Example: when he took his death wound besieging Chalus-Chabron (something else that the film is moderately faithful to, by the by) he ordered the guy who’d shot him in the NECK brought to him… and then gave him a hundred shillings (a fortune at the time) and let him go. He was beloved by his men (who would then all go home and tell their family grandiose tells of how great it was to be in his army) and did a lot of things that looked really awesome if you were writing an epic ballad or chivalric poem; nobody every got a lay written about how they balanced the budget. He managed to foist a lot of the bad rap for the squeeze he was putting on England to pay for his wars onto John.

But make no mistake, John was a real piece of work. He was greedy, spiteful, vengeful, treacherous, and, unforgivably, failed to balance those flaws by being competent as well. He was legitimately worse than his brother in many ways, I’d argue, and his reign was nothing but a string of unbroken disasters that, while some were inherited from Richard, he either exacerbated or caused himself.

He also totally never got over his jealousy over Richard’s weather-manipulation powers. Sad.

This, film, although I did actually really like it, made me weep for the stark historical realism of Gladiator.

The fine details were impressively accurate, like Gladiator. The small touches (Like WIll Scarlet being Welsh, King John acting like a proper Medieval monarch, and Richard the Lionheart being portrayed as a psychotic thug) were great.

And then King Philip invades England 18 years early and doesn’t get off the beach.

But I did like the fact that Robin wasn’t Loxley, even if they did turn him into more Watt Tyler.

I liked the movie well enough, but it did feel to me like they started out with an epic court-intrigue clash-of-armies story and tacked on ‘Robin Hood’ at the last moment.

I don’t demand all (or any) of the Flynn/Fairbanks traditions, but for me it’s a question of scale. I think Robin Hood needs to at least start out on a more individual level; one man who assembles a modest-sized band of outlaws to right local wrongs. Sure it might piss off King John, but Robin’s a guerilla-style fighter. Once he’s some sort of general commanding armies in open battlefields, I think you’ve lost any connection to any version of ‘Robin Hood’. And then what’s the point of giving it that name?

With this movie, you could just chop off the last five minutes (the “oh yeah, and then he became Robin Hood” section), rename the characters, and hey presto, perfectly fine film.

But as is, it felt like going to “Batman Begins” and being treated to the story of Bruce Wayne, freelance economic analyst, who while reviewing some annual reports stumbles across a chain of economic subterfuge perpetrated by international conglomerates with the covert assistance of major governments. Through backroom lobbying and deft political maneuvering he finally exposes the wrongdoers and triumphantly leads an investigative commission that puts an end to their schemes. Then right at the end he says, “Hm, now I think I will wear a batsuit and fight street crime,” a title card says “THE LEGEND BEGINS”, and credits.

Yeah, the main criticism I’ve heard is that they’re just sort of getting started with the Robin Hood business at the very end of the movie. Given how frustrated I am at prequels, this doesn’t really make me want to see it.

@Gloria: I think the idea is that “this movie makes even Gladiator look like historical realism”. At least I hope that’s the idea.

@magnuskn: It wasn’t just the German cut; the Canadian one did the same thing. I would hope the character wouldn’t survive that, but it did seem odd we didn’t get even a brief “falling-down-dead” shot.

I haven’t seen thgis film yet, although I do intend to go see it soon (I love all things Robin Hood). From what I’ve heard, though, this film seem to miss the mark completely about what Robin Hood is all about, but I hope I’m mistaken about this.

I do wonder if they used the wrong fictional character. If you’re looking to create a historical film dealing with all the political intrigue at the time, then why not use Ivanhoe, who would appear to be a far better fit into this sort of movie? Maybe he’s not as famous as Robin Hood, but Ivanhoe is surely better known than Maximus from Gladiator.

Remember a couple years ago, when there was going to be a big movie called Nottingham, about the sheriff using medieval investigative techniques such as tracking and arrow trajectory to hunt down a terrorist in Sherwood? Remember how it disappeared?

This is that movie. This is that movie shredded and re-written from the ground up because Ridley Scott thought it needed some “improvements”.

It’s really no wonder it doesn’t know what it wants to be; I read that at one point in the re-write, the sheriff and Robin were the same guy, like in Fight Club, the sheriff just chasing his own tail….

My problem with the movie started when it was reveled that Robin Hood’s daddy was a stonemason who wrote the Magna Carta, was killed after he got nobles on board, and was hidden near a celtic cross in whcih little 6 year old Robin Hood left his handprints. So this means Robin Hodd founds the freemasons to protect and promote the Magna Carta? From then on it was Robin Hood leads the ragtag Brits to stop the evil Frenchies? Robin Hoo, the hero of a mediveal reverse Saving Private Ryan, with the private being his Cate Blanchett leading the Sherwood Forest lost boys, said boys going from feral orphans to kick ass nife-fighters? the French using the medivael equivalent of WWII LSTs in a reverse Normandy? Mark Strong is last show riding away with an arrow through his neck..so he becomes a medivael Davros/Blofield dude? and Marion becomes a Wendy in the deep woods while Robin and friends suddenly appear well-adjusted, bathed, married and have spiffy haircuts? though Max von Sydow showed them all who was the best. so in conclusion..will there be one or two sequels?

Did you just reference Outlaws of Sherwood, my favorite take on Robin Hood of all time? Because that would be awesome. Of course, Robin McKinley’s version of the story involved, you know, Robin Hood doing Robin-Hoody things, and her Marian was a lot more interesting and her relationship with Robin less depressing than I hear Cate Blanchett’s is, but hey, Outlaws of Sherwood!